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Jackie Mentes, 8, and her mother, Beth Mentes, settle into their room at the new downtown Courtyard by Marriott.
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TOP: The hotel offers drinks, snacks and toiletries in the market area.
The new Courtyard by Marriott on Caroline Street has a bar and lounge area with mobiles hanging above. |
BY CATHY JETT
The Courtyard by Marriott that opened at the corner of Charlotte and Caroline streets last week isn't just downtown Fredericksburg's first major chain hotel.
It also features Courtyard's latest lobby design, which was crafted specifically to appeal to tech-savvy business travelers and the one piece of electronic gear they're never without.
"The laptop is the center of the business traveler's life," said Brian King, Marriott's vice president and global brand manager. "When you design a hotel lobby around a laptop, you design differently."
Take the "media pods" near the front entrance, for example, he said.
These cozy, curved spaces include small tables where customers can meet with clients or colleagues, go online wirelessly or watch the news on a flat-panel TV on each pod's wall.
"Five years ago, the business traveler was flying all day, and spent 45 minutes in their room downloading and answering e-mail--and not spending much time in the lobby," said King.
Today, business travelers are using Blackberrys and other mobile devices to answer e-mails as soon as their plane hits the tarmac, so they have more time "to hang out with the other inmates" once they get to their hotel, as one focus group participant put it, he said.
The focus group was part of a study Marriott does every four years to find out who does--and doesn't--stay at its 25-year-old Courtyard chain. King said he combed through the research to find the "hidden gems" necessary to rethink and redesign how Courtyard lobbies look and work.
The new design, now in 50 Courtyards, features a number of public/private spaces like the media pods where customers can work on their laptops, and a communal table with electric outlets where customers can sit, plug in and go online while sipping drinks.
The tables are "one of the first places that get used," said King. "That and the media pods."
Marriott also has made changes to what he refers to as "the big death-star front desk," the 15-foot long black granite desk that put a barrier between customers and staff as they checked in or out. It's being replaced by two much smaller "welcome pedestals."
"Now we stand in front of them and greet customers as they come in," King said. "It really changes behavior."
Besides checking customers in and giving them their keys, frontline staff also show them how to use Marriott's new trademarked "GoBoard," a large, flat-panel touch-screen that puts such information as weather, local headlines and events, sports and restaurant recommendations at users' fingertips. It even has mapping capabilities, so they can get and print directions.
Today's customers like having control, whether it's getting information off the GoBoard themselves or using the channel changer for the large-screen TV in the eight-seat home theater area in the lobby, King said.
Another "eye-opener" he discovered was how business travelers are eating. The old breakfast buffet is out, and grab-and-go options are in, he said. The Courtyard downtown, for example, has a bistro where customers can go to the counter to order such things as an egg wrap and Starbucks coffee for breakfast or panini for lunch. In the evening, the bistro turns into a wine bar.
The new Courtyard downtown also has some typical hotel features, including an 11,800-square-foot Mary Washington Room that can be used as a large meeting space or divided into two smaller spaces; and the Kenmore Room, which can be set up as a board room for 16 or classroom for up to 60. Both spaces can be set up for catered meals.
The hotel also boasts the Indian Queen Tavern, a 10- to 12-seat bar with two 42-inch flat-screen TVs. It takes its name from a tavern that stood on the site from 1771 until it burned in 1832.
Artifacts from the Indian Queen and other businesses and residences on the block where the hotel sits fill three display cases. Among them are wine bottles and a piece of the tavern's foundation, horseshoes from the carriage shop built there after the fire, and medicine bottles from Cassiday's Pharmacy, which occupied the site from 1907 until the 1950s.
"I think it creates a continuity in the new building, which I think is important," said Kerri Barile, president of Dovetail Cultural Resource Group. Her organization, which is in Fredericksburg, conducted an archaeological dig at the site in 2006.
People have been so eager to see the hotel since it opened quietly last week that the Courtyard ran out of the 1,200 hot dogs it bought to give away last Saturday and had to buy 800 more.
"The flow of people started first thing in the morning. It really didn't slow until the Heritage Festival ended," said Brian Cook, vice president of operations for Palmer-Gosnell Management. It co-owns the hotel with local developer Tommy Mitchell.
The downtown Courtyard already has booked a number of meetings by such groups as the Fredericksburg Area Chamber of Commerce, and reserved rooms for many bridal parties and their guests, Cook said.
"It's been a big deficit that we haven't had a big downtown hotel," said Karen Hedelt, Fredericksburg's acting director of economic development. "I think the Marriott flag will attract the transient traveler, and they're working very hard with businesses in our area to be one of their go-to hotels for their clients' accommodations."
Cathy Jett: 540/374-5407
Email: cjett@freelancestar.com
